Forced into a "Healing Circle"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

Did you miss that they work at different organizations? OP may end up a social media wonder from this but doubt a lawyer is going to make a difference here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

Did you miss that they work at different organizations? OP may end up a social media wonder from this but doubt a lawyer is going to make a difference here.

But many organizations would pause before sending their employee into a complaint t based healing circle especially with another company. Op may have been nasty and unreasonable and in danger of becoming a social media “star” but nothing she’s said suggests that is what’s most most likely.

[Anonymous]

Oh FFS. She overstepped and you simply pointed out the right way to channel communications and/ or changes?

“Healing circle” because you wanted things handled a certain way and she wanted to unilaterally implement a change that wasn’t hers to implement?
Jeezus.

NOT EVERYBODY gets a trophy in the workplace!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

Did you miss that they work at different organizations? OP may end up a social media wonder from this but doubt a lawyer is going to make a difference here.

But many organizations would pause before sending their employee into a complaint t based healing circle especially with another company. Op may have been nasty and unreasonable and in danger of becoming a social media “star” but nothing she’s said suggests that is what’s most most likely.

This. If one of my employees was asked to go to a healing circle, my first response would be "do not go and do not say anything." And I would immediately get on a call with HR and legal.

[Anonymous]

The more I think about this, the more that I think this should simply be escalated out of your hands. Your engagement with the third party is limited to work only. Any HR/legal issues the other company has is between the other company and your company. You should not be the HR/legal representative for your company.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

Did you miss that they work at different organizations? OP may end up a social media wonder from this but doubt a lawyer is going to make a difference here.

But many organizations would pause before sending their employee into a complaint t based healing circle especially with another company. Op may have been nasty and unreasonable and in danger of becoming a social media “star” but nothing she’s said suggests that is what’s most most likely.

This. If one of my employees was asked to go to a healing circle, my first response would be "do not go and do not say anything." And I would immediately get on a call with HR and legal.

Absolutely. If I hear of this, I would tell my employee to disengage immediately and call my peer in the other company to find out what is going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

Did you miss that they work at different organizations? OP may end up a social media wonder from this but doubt a lawyer is going to make a difference here.

But many organizations would pause before sending their employee into a complaint t based healing circle especially with another company. Op may have been nasty and unreasonable and in danger of becoming a social media “star” but nothing she’s said suggests that is what’s most most likely.

This. If one of my employees was asked to go to a healing circle, my first response would be "do not go and do not say anything." And I would immediately get on a call with HR and legal.

Absolutely. If I hear of this, I would tell my employee to disengage immediately and call my peer in the other company to find out what is going on.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

Did you miss that they work at different organizations? OP may end up a social media wonder from this but doubt a lawyer is going to make a difference here.

That doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

Did you miss that they work at different organizations? OP may end up a social media wonder from this but doubt a lawyer is going to make a difference here.

But many organizations would pause before sending their employee into a complaint t based healing circle especially with another company. Op may have been nasty and unreasonable and in danger of becoming a social media “star” but nothing she’s said suggests that is what’s most most likely.

This. If one of my employees was asked to go to a healing circle, my first response would be "do not go and do not say anything." And I would immediately get on a call with HR and legal.

Absolutely. If I hear of this, I would tell my employee to disengage immediately and call my peer in the other company to find out what is going on.

+1

And I would try to have a HR or legal person from my company on the line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

Did you miss that they work at different organizations? OP may end up a social media wonder from this but doubt a lawyer is going to make a difference here.

But many organizations would pause before sending their employee into a complaint t based healing circle especially with another company. Op may have been nasty and unreasonable and in danger of becoming a social media “star” but nothing she’s said suggests that is what’s most most likely.

For sure the healing circle thing is insane but why are so many people saying this might end up in a lawsuit? That part doesn't make any sense, what possible grounds could there be when there is no employer/employee relationship and possibly not even a contractual arranagement between these two entities? That part doesn't make any sense to me at all.

[Anonymous]

A lot of folks are getting hung up on the phrase "healing circle". Forget the lingo. This is just conflict resolution process and OP -- you should be grateful it exists. You can use it to protect yourself. And ideally, it will actually resolve what sounds like a misunderstanding of roles and responsibilities. My main piece of advice: they need to hire a neutral mediator to facilitate. It's really important.

I once had a similar miscommunication in which I was accused by someone within my organization of having an overly harsh tone (I'm a white woman and so was the person accusing me). But instead of having a process in place for addressing, my very small organization tried to handle the situation "ad hoc." What this meant was that I was told by my boss that I had overstepped and I was ordered to issue a written apology in which I also promised to never "antagonize" my colleague again. Keep in mind -- the email in question had no bad language, was 100% about work. The statement that irked my colleague was the phrase "In the future, please run these changes by me so that I can make sure they are in keeping with the project mission." I remember it exactly because I had to talk about it so many times. I was told by numerous people in the organization that I was being overly aggressive, "shaming" my colleague, and that I should have run the language of my email past my boss before sending. It was a similar situation -- I was project lead and this woman was providing auxiliary support related to area of expertise, but had reached out to our clients on her own without talking to me and promised a fundamental change to our deliverable.

Anyway, I wound up writing the apology. I also wound up leaving the organization within a year. I felt completely railroaded by the process. I would have welcomed a "healing circle" or anything that would have allowed the people involved to have a constructive back and forth about what had happened. But I would request that it be lead by a neutral mediator hired to conduct the healing circle because otherwise there is a risk that one organization or the other will take over the process.

Participate fully. Respond to the requests to do pre-work, even if they seem dumb. But also make sure that it is run in a way that is actually designed to resolve conflict, and not just a way for this woman and her organization to pile-on. Neutral mediator. It's essential.

[Anonymous]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the facilitated call, the healing circle, and the paperwork with the I statements are all coming from the other nonprofit correct? Shouldn't a facilitated call be done by an independent third party entity? It looks from reading the OP that you might likely end up in a situation with two people (or more) from one organization and yourself. You do not want a facilitated call/healing circle/mediation that is lopsided.

Check with whoever sent the paperwork from their group. Find out what the expectations are. Reinterate that your organization's procedure is to reach out directly so this is an unfamiliar structure. Don't say "I don't know what a healing circle is." If you do, you'll just look ignorant to the other nonprofit. Find out who will be there, if are expected to bring your supervisor. If they tell you it will only be the three of you, fill in your supervisor. If you get there and there's more than the mediator and the other person, ask to reschedule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ignore the buzz words they are using and translate into what you know: a Latina subordinate made a complaint about a white supervisor. They are investigating. Act accordingly, and maybe have your lawyer review your response before you put anything in writing. Have a witness on your side of the call.

For sure the healing circle thing is insane but why are so many people saying this might end up in a lawsuit? That part doesn't make any sense, what possible grounds could there be when there is no employer/employee relationship and possibly not even a contractual arranagement between these two entities? That part doesn't make any sense to me at all.

A POC got offended at a white person. That's all it takes these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of folks are getting hung up on the phrase "healing circle". Forget the lingo. This is just conflict resolution process and OP -- you should be grateful it exists. You can use it to protect yourself. And ideally, it will actually resolve what sounds like a misunderstanding of roles and responsibilities. My main piece of advice: they need to hire a neutral mediator to facilitate. It's really important.

I once had a similar miscommunication in which I was accused by someone within my organization of having an overly harsh tone (I'm a white woman and so was the person accusing me). But instead of having a process in place for addressing, my very small organization tried to handle the situation "ad hoc." What this meant was that I was told by my boss that I had overstepped and I was ordered to issue a written apology in which I also promised to never "antagonize" my colleague again. Keep in mind -- the email in question had no bad language, was 100% about work. The statement that irked my colleague was the phrase "In the future, please run these changes by me so that I can make sure they are in keeping with the project mission." I remember it exactly because I had to talk about it so many times. I was told by numerous people in the organization that I was being overly aggressive, "shaming" my colleague, and that I should have run the language of my email past my boss before sending. It was a similar situation -- I was project lead and this woman was providing auxiliary support related to area of expertise, but had reached out to our clients on her own without talking to me and promised a fundamental change to our deliverable.

Anyway, I wound up writing the apology. I also wound up leaving the organization within a year. I felt completely railroaded by the process. I would have welcomed a "healing circle" or anything that would have allowed the people involved to have a constructive back and forth about what had happened. But I would request that it be lead by a neutral mediator hired to conduct the healing circle because otherwise there is a risk that one organization or the other will take over the process.

Participate fully. Respond to the requests to do pre-work, even if they seem dumb. But also make sure that it is run in a way that is actually designed to resolve conflict, and not just a way for this woman and her organization to pile-on. Neutral mediator. It's essential.

This would NEVER happen to a man for using direct language. NEVER.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of folks are getting hung up on the phrase "healing circle". Forget the lingo. This is just conflict resolution process and OP -- you should be grateful it exists. You can use it to protect yourself. And ideally, it will actually resolve what sounds like a misunderstanding of roles and responsibilities. My main piece of advice: they need to hire a neutral mediator to facilitate. It's really important.

I once had a similar miscommunication in which I was accused by someone within my organization of having an overly harsh tone (I'm a white woman and so was the person accusing me). But instead of having a process in place for addressing, my very small organization tried to handle the situation "ad hoc." What this meant was that I was told by my boss that I had overstepped and I was ordered to issue a written apology in which I also promised to never "antagonize" my colleague again. Keep in mind -- the email in question had no bad language, was 100% about work. The statement that irked my colleague was the phrase "In the future, please run these changes by me so that I can make sure they are in keeping with the project mission." I remember it exactly because I had to talk about it so many times. I was told by numerous people in the organization that I was being overly aggressive, "shaming" my colleague, and that I should have run the language of my email past my boss before sending. It was a similar situation -- I was project lead and this woman was providing auxiliary support related to area of expertise, but had reached out to our clients on her own without talking to me and promised a fundamental change to our deliverable.

Anyway, I wound up writing the apology. I also wound up leaving the organization within a year. I felt completely railroaded by the process. I would have welcomed a "healing circle" or anything that would have allowed the people involved to have a constructive back and forth about what had happened. But I would request that it be lead by a neutral mediator hired to conduct the healing circle because otherwise there is a risk that one organization or the other will take over the process.

Participate fully. Respond to the requests to do pre-work, even if they seem dumb. But also make sure that it is run in a way that is actually designed to resolve conflict, and not just a way for this woman and her organization to pile-on. Neutral mediator. It's essential.

This would NEVER happen to a man for using direct language. NEVER.

And if you make this about a gender issue, it will get worse. Men do use healing circles too.